


Pretty as a Purl

by Liliththestormgoddess



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Natasha Romanov, Gen, Injured Team, Protective Natasha Romanov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 06:10:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1594460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liliththestormgoddess/pseuds/Liliththestormgoddess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha Romanoff: super secret spy, Avenger, killer of men and courter of death. She also liked to knit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Clint Barton

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel or the Avengers.
> 
> Natasha knitted when dreams haunted her. She knitted when she was scared. She had started to knit to deal with her fear for Clint, and now she’s knitting to deal with her fear for the Avengers. And that’s what really scared her.

Natasha Romanoff: super secret SHIELD spy, deadly Russian and Avenger, killer of men and courter of death.

She also liked to knit.

She wasn’t very good at it, to be honest, but that hardly mattered.

She’d learned the simple stitches at a young age from her grandmother, and could remember making a small, simple scarf.

However, events had transpired and she had soon dropped the hobby.

She picked it up again years later. In a SHIELD safe house she had found a few bundles of yarn and several knitting needles. Idly wondering who had left them there, she stared at them as warm, safe memories flooded her mind. There was a certain calm that came with knitting.

She didn’t touch them for three days.

On the third night, she’d woken in a cold sweat, frantically pulling the knife from under her pillow. When she’d calmed down enough to determine that she’d only been dreaming, she dropped the knife. Sleep, however, eluded her.

She remembered the knitting needles in the corner. She picked them up in her still-shaking hands and it all came back to her as she began to weave. She figured she would knit until sleep came back to her.

She had planned only on a scarf. When sleep finally beckoned once again, she had the makings of a small blanket.

She added to the blanket after missions. She couldn’t carry it with her during them, but it stayed in her room at SHIELD. It was one of her only personal possessions, and to most people it resembled a loopy, sloppy blanket in a myriad of clashing colours that looked like a half-blind arthritic old woman had knit it.

To Natasha, it was sanity and calm. It was home.

When the blanket was big enough to cover her whole bed, she tried her hand at other things. Her first attempt was a sweater.

It was big and shapeless, but it was comfortable and _damn it_ , she didn’t have to look sexy every second.

She and Barton had been sent on an op in the Alps and she had packed the sweater for extra warmth. She’d planned on wearing it herself, but her idiot partner had gone and nearly _frozen_ to death, so when she rescued his blue ass she’d tugged the sweater over his head and wrapped him in blankets.

Two days later and she began to wonder if she was ever going to get the sweater back. Barton hadn’t taken it off. She’d expected some snide remark about _women_ and _knitting_ and was preparing to kick his ass back out into the snow, but what he’d actually said was: “Make me one?”

It was so utterly normal that it was abnormal. Natasha didn’t know what to do.

When the op went even more horrifically wrong and the extraction picked them up to whisk Clint to the nearest hospital, Natasha found herself sitting on the floor of his hospital room, knitting furiously. Her hands shook and the stitches were sloppy and uneven, but _damn it_ , he was going to wake up because she was knitting the stupid sweater for him.

When he did wake several hours later, she threw the sweater at his face and stalked out the door.

Unlike Natasha, Barton wasn’t afraid to waltz around headquarters in his bulky, unattractive sweater. Agents snickered as he walked by, but Coulson merely raised an eyebrow. “Nice sweater. You make it yourself, Barton?”

Clint just grinned. “Jealous?”

“Mhm.”

Barton’s collection of knitted wear grew over the years. Each time he landed himself in the hospital, something new appeared on his bed. Clint knew it was Natasha’s way of dealing with her concern for him, and he never blamed her for not visiting him. He knew her enough to know by now that when she knitted, it was when demons haunted her thoughts and shadows stalked her dreams. The fact that she knitted when he was laid up spoke volumes.

One night as they lay there comfortably in bed, Clint was awake while Natasha slept peacefully. It wasn’t often that this happened. He ran his fingers over the large, uneven stitches of the blanket that covered them. He traced where she started and stopped, when she purled and when she knitted.

He thought it was ironic that each piece told a story about a nightmare or haunting memory, and yet it gave her comfort at night.


	2. Steve Rogers

Everything had gone to hell in a hand basket so fast, it had almost made Natasha’s head spin. One minute she was listening to Stark and Barton trading insults over the comm. lines while the rest of the bad guys were eradicated, and the next she was being thrown through the air.

She couldn’t tell up from down and her world was enveloped in darkness and heat for long moments, and when she looked up, the city block she was lying in was ablaze and silent.

Hacking coughs racking her body as she unsteadily got to her feet, she looked around, trying to suppress her horror and figure out what exactly had happened. Blood oozed into her line of vision but she wiped it away. There was a persistent ringing in her ear and it took her long moments before she was able to hear the shouting over the communications.

She could hear the panicked, angry voices, but her mind wouldn’t process them. So, she stumbled towards the point of the blast.

Fortunately, that was indeed where the rest of her team was. Unfortunately, she also witnessed the reason behind the frantic voices in her ear.

A bomb had gone off in the building Steve had been standing in front of. The blast had thrown him straight across the street and into the next building. As if that wasn’t enough, he’d also been impaled on a large piece of wood.

Stark was kneeling next to Steve, on the line with SHIELD and demanding a med-evac. He sounded close to hysterics. Banner knelt next to him, his mouth tight and thin, but his hands were smooth and steady and the Hulk was safely resting.

Thor was pacing back and forth, clearly uncomfortable with being unable to assist in any way. Barton was missing, Natasha noticed, and she hoped that he’d safely gotten down from his perch and was heading down.

She looked down at Rogers, whose face had gone deathly pale. His suit was no longer blue, red and white – it was just red. Blood was everywhere, and it was quickly coating Tony and Bruce. Steve lay there, his eyes squeezed tight and moaning, and all Natasha could think was: _He’s going to die._

And Natasha? Why, she was cool as a cucumber, standing there and watching the events unfold before her. Her heart rate didn’t increase, her palms weren’t sweaty, and her eyes never wavered from the horrible scene.

When SHIELD arrived and whisked Rogers away, the team following, she caught a different ride.

When she arrived back at base she headed in the opposite direction of the medical bay. It was the one place that she did not want to be right now.

_He’s going to die_ , she thought again.

Her hand froze from where she was about to open the door. She glanced down at her hand and noticed the slight tremor. Quickly, she pulled the hand back to her side and stilled it. With a quick glance around to make sure no one had seen, she slipped inside her room, closing the door firmly behind her.

_He’s going to die_. That persistent thought bothered her, she realized. But why should it? She was used to people dying. People died every day. _Especially_ in her line of work. Why should she care?

Her hands, though still tightly clasped together, shook again. She cared, because it was Rogers. He was her teammate, he was Captain America, he was _invincible_ , he was a good person – he was a friend.

And the notion that she cared whether or not he was going to die scared her more than anything.

Her hands would not still this time. She had to do something. Her gaze turned to the knitting basket in the corner, and she quickly fell to the floor and began knitting.

_He’s going to die._

* * *

Back in the medical bay, Clint and the others had noticed Natasha’s absence. The others pondered where she could be, but Clint thought that he knew. So he excused himself and headed to Natasha’s room.

He found her on the floor, knitting furiously. She didn’t acknowledge his presence, even when Clint sat down next to her.

“Natasha,” he said softly.

She didn’t respond. _Purl, purl, purl._

“Natasha, he’s going to be fine.”

_Knit, knit, knit._

“Nat,” Clint said, slightly louder, and placed a hand on her shoulder. Finally, the needles slowed to a stop. “The doctors say that he’s going to be fine. He’ll be laid up for a long time, but you know how he heals.”

“He should be dead,” she whispered, staring down at her work.

Clint chuckled. “God bless the super-soldier serum, hmm?” He looked down at the blue and red mitten she had managed to finish. He traced the simple colour-alternating pattern. “He’ll like these, I’m sure.”

* * *

Natasha thought Steve was sleeping when she slipped into his room and laid the finished pair of mittens on his bedside table. It seemed wrong for her to keep them, when he had been the only thought on her mind as she knitted them.

Steve still wears those mittens whenever it gets cold enough, even though his hands never really get cold.


	3. Thor Odinson

“Romanoff, get out of there!” Rogers shouted in her ear.

Natasha ignored him, not even bothering to slow down.

“I see ‘em, ‘bout twenty of them coming in the back. I can’t get them all,” Clint reported.

“Romanoff, abort. I repeat, get out of there,” Rogers growled.

Natasha scowled and opened her link. “Negative, Cap. I can get to him, so let me do my job.” She only got a few steps further when Thor appeared in her path. His face was creased with concern, and his large body blocked her path.

“Lady Natasha, we must make haste,” he said urgently.

She huffed. Did no one think that maybe she’d done this stuff all her life? She wasn’t suddenly a little china doll. “Thor, out of my way or – “ Suddenly Thor grabbed her and spun her around so that they were now reversed in the hallway. She wobbled slightly on her feet from the sudden displacement, but before she could loudly protest, she saw men appearing in the hallway behind Thor – where she used to be – and one of the men lifted up his rather large and otherworldly gun.

The blast hit Thor directly in the back. The impact sent them flying as Thor still held Natasha tight in his arms. His body curled in on impact, and he took the brunt of it as they landed several hundred feet later, and slid to a stop.

Natasha gasped for breath. It was hard to breathe with three hundred pounds of god on you. She weakly pushed at Thor. When he didn’t move, her struggles increased. “Thor!” she cried, trying to wriggle out. It was getting harder to breathe. “Thor! Get up!”

But the god didn’t answer her pleas. She gasped and writhed some more, before turning her head to meet his eyes, and a scream died in her throat.

His eyes were horrifically blank.

Natasha let out a strangled gasp as her hand slipped under her pillow, unsheathing the knife there. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness as they roamed the room, searching for an intruder. As her breathing slowly evened out she realized that she had woken from a nightmare.

She let out a shuddering breath as she stashed the knife back. Pushing her damp hair back from her head, she noticed her hand was shaking. She mentally berated herself. She needed to calm down. It was just a dream.

Except it wasn’t. Not entirely, anyways. Natasha had stubbornly refused to evacuate a building while hunting down their target and Thor had swooped in to save her ass. She had been furious that he had barged in, because she _did not_ need saving. But then more men had shown up unexpectedly, and Thor had jumped in front of her. He took the hit meant for her. To save her.

No one did that. Not for her.

The last part of her dream was her own, however. Thor had been unconscious when they’d finally slid to a stop, and she had been close to panic when she couldn’t get him off of her. But the others had pulled him off and he was resting in medical. They had said that he would be fine, that he would heal extremely fast, because well – he was a god.

She ran another frustrated hand through her hair before getting up. She wasn’t sleeping anymore tonight. She stomped around her room, anger and anxiety battling for dominance.

She was angry with Thor for risking his life for her. It was her decision and she should have taken that blast. Not him, and definitely not for her. No one should have taken that for her. Why would he do that? She wasn’t worth it. She definitely wasn’t worth it.

She was afraid that he would pay for that mistake.

The worst part was she knew that when he woke and saw her, his first words would be to ask if she was well, and then smile as if nothing had gone wrong.

So, Natasha knitted.

The dream had felt so real; it had shaken her to the core. Actually caring for the rest of the Avengers had shaken her. She just wanted it all to go away.

It was just after sunrise when the needles slowed to a stop and she looked down at what she had done. She had a small blanket that was choppy and full of holes. She couldn’t remember a single stitch of it. Carefully, almost reverently, she placed it back in the basket with her needles and stashed it back under the bed. It had served its purpose; now, she had to face the day.

She wondered idly what had possessed her to give Steve the mittens she had knitted when he was injured. She certainly didn’t want to give Thor the blanket she had just done. It wasn’t even because it was sloppy and horrible – she was sure that anything she gave him would make his face light up. That’s just how he was. And while she liked Steve and she liked Thor, Thor was definitely not as discrete as Steve. She had no desire for the others to know that she knitted, especially when she was worried or anxious. And she _especially_ didn’t want Tony to know.

After she finished her morning grooming and erased the bags from under her eyes, Natasha grabbed a box of Pop Tarts that she had hidden in her closet. God, she was getting soft.


	4. Bruce Banner

Natasha coldly watched as the smoke from her gun wafted away in small, circular patterns. Her blood was buzzing with adrenaline and barely contained anger, and the scent of gunpowder in the air tickled her nose and made her heart beat faster.

Throwing a look of disdain towards the men at her feet with bullet holes between their eyes, she touched a finger to her communicator. “This is Black Widow. Targets are down.” Her voice cut through the air like steel.

Rogers’ reply came back, and the tightness in his voice could have been due to Natasha’s intensity or due to the crisis at hand. “Copy that. We’re headed for the jet. We’ve got Banner.”

“I’m on my way.” She spun on her heel and walked nonchalantly back.

SHIELD wouldn’t be happy that she had gotten rid of the men, but she was beyond caring. They had harmed Dr. Banner. No one touched Dr. Banner. In fact, no one messed with any of the Avengers without receiving retribution.

She arrived at the jet the same time as the rest of the team, Steve carrying the unconscious form of Dr. Banner in his arms. Natasha stonily watched as Steve carefully gave Bruce over to the medics, who began to take his vitals and hook him up to machines. His face was pale and gaunt and bruises covered his body. It had been almost three days. Who knew what the bastards had done to him?

Natasha’s fingers itched for her Widow Stings. She knew that those men had died too quickly. She should have killed them slower.

Natasha and the good doctor had managed to find common ground after their initial meeting. He had apologized so profusely for his actions aboard the helicarrier and Natasha knew he was genuinely sorry. She liked him from the start; it was just hard to get over the fact that he had scared her so severely. The Black Widow didn’t scare. She _did_ the scaring.

But Bruce was a nice guy, albeit shy and quiet. She would talk to him when he was consulting for situations, and after a while, she began to get over her instinctual fear. She would seek him out just to say hello. And then she began to have conversations with him. And lo and behold, the man had a sense of humour too. Natasha enjoyed his company.

She might even admit that they were friends.

The Black Widow didn’t have many friends. Before SHIELD, she had none. After SHIELD, she could include Barton and Coulson as friends. And after the alien invasion, she had begun to include the rest of the Avengers as friends. Because she did not count many among her confidences, she protected them with ferocity. So when she learned that someone had kidnapped Banner, she swore up and down that they would pay.

Now, she stood in front of his room in the medical wing with the rest of the team, listening to the doctor discuss Banner’s health.

“He has a lot of tranquilizers in his system. That amount would kill a normal man, but even so, we’re worried about their affect on Dr. Banner’s heart. He’s having some trouble breathing so we’ve hooked him up to a ventilator. There’s a nasty cut on his head; we’re shaving the area and stitching it up, but we think he may also have a concussion. We’ll know more when he wakes up.”

Natasha didn’t bother staying to hear Stark grill the doctor. She headed for her room. She had begun to feel a tremor in her hands.

* * *

It was almost two in the morning when Natasha slipped into Bruce’s room. They’d taken him off the ventilator and he was breathing deeply on his own now. Natasha thought there had never been a more beautiful sound. She stood there, just watching for a few moments, before laying the hat she had knitted on his bedside table.

Suddenly, Bruce stirred. His eyes fluttered and his body shifted uncomfortably. He let out a soft moan before his eyes opened fully and focused on her. “Nat-asha?” he asked.

“Hi Bruce,” she whispered, sitting on the end of his bed.

He frowned and groggily rolled his head, taking in his surroundings. “Wha-“

“You’re at a SHIELD hospital. You’re going to be fine,” she assured him.

He let out a grunt and looked back at her. “You guys found me.” He licked his lips.

Natasha smiled for the first time in the last three days. “Of course.” She gently patted his knee. “Now you need to sleep.” She got up and headed to the door.

“Natasha?” he called. She turned back around. Bruce gestured towards the hat sitting on the table. “Is that for me?” he asked.

If it hadn’t been so dark Bruce might have been able to claim he saw the Black Widow blush. “They had to shave your hair,” she said, her voice thick. “I figured your head might be cold.”

Bruce’s lip twitched, but he reached over and grabbed the hat. “You’re right, it is.” He pulled it snugly over his head. “Thank you.”

Natasha stared at him a moment longer before leaving.

The next morning, Clint couldn’t help but grin at the sight of Banner in his moss-green toque.


	5. Tony Stark

Natasha would later claim that her anxiety came from staying around Pepper for too long.

Pepper Potts was normally a very calm and collected person. She was a pillar of strength and fortitude, and was known for her driving attitude and her ability to strike any deal. Some of the weaker souls were said to have quaked in their boots when she entered the room, her presence making her seem bigger than she actually was.

Natasha knew this to be true. She had worked for the woman, after all. And because she had worked for her, she knew Pepper quite well. After the whole New York fiasco the two had started to talk once again. As the only other female presence, the two had instantly formed a pact to keep the others safe and relatively sane.

But even Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts had breaking points. And Natasha was currently watching her friend come apart at the seams.

It was understandable, though. Pepper normally fretted about Tony’s safety and rightly so. He was a lunatic who went up against bad guys on a daily basis. But when you’re boyfriend is nearly incinerated, and his suit literally melts to his skin, you are allowed a small meltdown. Natasha understood.

What she didn’t understand, however, was why _she_ was left to deal with it.

“You’re a woman,” Clint had told her with a shrug as he fled from the waterworks. Natasha resisted the urge to flay him. She may have been a woman, but she was raised as an assassin. Most of the time if she was acting like a woman it was to get what she wanted, and most of the time she used it against a mark. She didn’t _do_ comfort and girl talk and stuff.

The two women were waiting outside of the operating room, as they had been for the past three hours. The surgeons had to take it slow, removing as much of the armour from Tony’s skin as they could before they tackled the parts that had melded to his skin. It was predicted to be a very long process. And Natasha could not take Pepper pacing and wringing her hands for several more hours.

Clint had run off, Bruce was assisting the operation, Steve had disappeared to talk to Fury, and Thor had also disappeared to parts unknown. That just left Natasha and a very distraught Potts.

“Pepper,” Natasha tried once again, her voice soft. “Please, sit down. You’re making me dizzy.”

Pepper spun to look at her, blinking several times before she was able to process the words, before sitting stiffly down in the chair next to Natasha. She stayed there for about five seconds before she leapt up again and began to pace.

A small ding came from her jacket pocket, and Pepper jumped in the air. It took her several moments before she realized it was her cell phone. She quickly dug it out and frowned at the screen. “No, no, no,” she moaned, typing harshly. “I said I wanted it by Friday, we had a contract!” The phone let out several more dings and Pepper pounded on the keys as she walked, muttering harshly under her breath.

Natasha sighed deeply. “Pepper.”

The other woman kept typing.

“Pepper,” she said a little louder.

No response.

“Pepper!” Natasha yelled, making the other redhead drop her phone in surprise. “Pepper, you can’t do this to yourself. Not for the next eight hours. You need to find something else to occupy yourself, or you’ll just wear yourself down.”

Pepper turned to her and Natasha’s stomach clenched when she saw the fresh tears there. “What am I supposed to do?” she whispered.

Oh, no. This is what Natasha was hoping to avoid.

What _could_ Pepper do? What would Natasha do? Well, most of the time, to relieve tension she would head down to the range and shoot everything in sight. Or punch the shit out of a punching bag. But Pepper couldn’t do those things. What else was there? She was floundering now, because more tears were joining the ones on Pepper’s cheeks and Natasha couldn’t stand it.

And then it hit her. Knitting. Granted, it wasn’t her greatest idea but it was the best she had right now. And if it helped her, who's to say it wouldn’t help Pepper?

Natasha jumped from her chair. “Knitting,” she said simply.

Pepper frowned. “What?”

“Have you ever knitted before?”

“I – uh,” Pepper sniffed, brushing a strand of hair back from her face. “Um, I think so, when I was little. My mother tried to get me into it, but I – I really didn’t have the knack for it.”

Natasha hesitated a moment before reaching out and grabbing one of Pepper’s hands. She didn’t know how to do this stuff, but she figured it was a safe enough gesture. She could feel the tension in Pepper’s hand, but now she had the woman’s complete attention. “Let me show you,” she said. “It will keep your mind off things and your hands busy. And it really helps with the stress.”

“Okay,” she responded weakly.

And that was how the two women came to be, knitting in the waiting room. Natasha was able to skip the basics because Pepper was able to recall the simple stitches, but she still guided her hands through the motions, coaching her along. Because her actions required both dexterity and focus, Pepper’s mind slowly drifted from the situation behind the doors and concentrated on the wool beneath her fingers. Natasha could pinpoint the exact moment that Pepper was able to restore some semblance of calm and sanity as her shoulders relaxed and her foot stopped tapping. Natasha pulled out her own needles and worked on the opposite end and together the women extended the blanket. They carried on in this fashion until the operating room doors opened.

Pepper promptly dropped everything that was in her hands and dashed towards the doctor. Natasha, in a calmer manner, set her knitting aside and approached the two, catching the doctor’s words of reassurance. When Pepper disappeared inside Tony’s room, Natasha headed back towards her own bedroom. A few hours later Clint came to tell her that Tony was awake, but it was only late at night when she slipped down to see him.

Natasha, deep, _deep_ down, liked Tony. It was a…complicated relationship. He loved to tease her. She loved to threaten his life. And they both had each other’s backs, come hell or high water, no questions asked.

When she slipped into his hospital room, the lights were off and only the lights of the machines and Tony’s arc reactor cast a glow around the room. Tony was sleeping, and from what Natasha could see, most of his upper body was swaddled in gauze. His face was relatively unscathed, surprisingly.

Natasha cast a sympathetic glance at Pepper’s slumbering form in the chair next to Tony’s bed. She sighed as she walked over and surveyed the exhausted woman. That position could not be comfortable. Yet, she knew without asking anyone that Pepper had put up a fight to be able to stay in this room. Gently, Natasha pried the knitting needles from her limp hands. The exponential growth of the blanket was testament to the amount of stress that Pepper had been under.

As she was using the new blanket to cover the sleeping woman, Tony began to stir.

The billionaire let out a soft moan before his eyes fluttered open and he regained consciousness. “Pep,” he slurred, “Make a donation to that wishing foundation. ‘Cause I think I had a taste of hell, and I ain’t going back.”

Natasha moved closer to his bed. “Pepper’s sleeping,” she told him.

Tony groggily turned his head in her direction. A loopy smile formed on his face. “Heyyy, Spidey.”

Natasha frowned at the nickname but ignored it because he was sick and on lots of pain medication.

“’S’nice blanket,” Tony muttered, gesturing with a heavily wrapped hand towards the blanket draped across Pepper’s lap. “Pepper showed me.” When Natasha remained silent, he said, “Were you knitting too?” Despite the drugs and exhaustion running through his system, Tony still managed to sound like the intruding bastard he was.

Natasha’s eyes narrowed. “No. Pepper made that.”

“Ah, c’mon, I know Pepper doesn’t knit. Or didn’t. And Bruce doesn’t either.”

“I don’t knit,” Natasha insisted, her voice lowering dangerously.

“Yes, you do! I know – ah, okay, okay, you don’t! You don’t!” Tony’s eyes widened as Natasha brandished one of the knitting needles at him. He let out a breath when she returned it to the basket at Pepper’s feet.

Settling back into his pillows, Tony looked over at Pepper, and his expression softened. “She looks…calm now. She was – I think the knitting helped.” His voice was barely over a whisper, but Natasha could hear the silent words behind it. _Thank you for looking after her when I couldn’t._ Tony would never say it out loud, and Natasha would never admit, even on the pain of death, that Pepper’s hands had not been the only ones shaking as they knitted.

Instead, she simply said, “Go back to sleep, Stark,” before walking out.


End file.
